The Economist takes a look at what has emerged as George W. Bush's energy policy:
Posted by DeLong at November 20, 2003 01:00 PM | TrackBackEconomist.com | A new energy bill: ...After three years of talk, Congress has agreed on a massive energy bill, full of handouts to every imaginable corner of the business. Republican leaders rammed the bill through to help George Bush's re-election race. They may have gone too far.
As The Economist went to press, Democratic senators looked set to start a last-minute filibuster to delay the bill. They are still furious that the Republicans shut them out of the process of reconciling the Senate and House versions of their bill. But when John Dingell, the top Democrat on the House energy committee, compares reading the 1,100-page bill to "lifting the lid of a garbage can and smelling the strong smell of special interests"?, he is not merely making a partisan point. The "no-lobbyist-left-behind bill" has also been condemned by John McCain, the libertarian Cato Institute and the Wall Street Journal.
Is the law really that bad? Yes. Invoking the bogus notion of an energy-supply crisis, Republican leaders have doled out a fortune to energy lobbies. The biggest whack--some $22 billion--goes to the oil-and-gas industry. Having lost the opportunity to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, it will get billions to build a pipeline to bring natural gas from Alaska to Chicago. The nuclear industry gets more than $7 billion. The coal industry picks up $8 billion...
The Economist hates George W. Bush so much because it recognizes that he isn't a true conservative when it comes to economic policy. Being British, the magazine isn't so blinded by political calculations to be at all conflicted in saying so.
Posted by: Dimmy Karras on November 20, 2003 02:06 PMThe gas pipeline is the least bad of the ideas.
China is imposing fuel standards on all vehicles that are more stringent that the US. Energy efficiency is seen as a competitive advantage now that Chinese are net oil importers.
Posted by: bakho on November 20, 2003 02:25 PMWould God that it were so. Alas, the magazine is in a real pickle. It endorsed Bush and has doggedly supported him despite overwhelming mounting evidence that the GOP is turning against free trade just like the Tory Party turned against it late in the 19th century.
No, The Economist usually lays his shortcomings--most obnoxiously for them, his crass appeals to the religious right and the minerals extraction sector--at the matrix of politics prevailing, or else the American national character. That drives me nuts. Suddenly WE'VE gone mad?
Posted by: James R MacLean on November 20, 2003 02:33 PMZbigniew Brzezinski hates him too.
You don't have to be a liberal to hate Bush.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2090817/
Below excerpted from Slate:
Has Zbigniew Brzezinski gone soft? Zbig was never a favorite among liberal Democrats. As the national security adviser in Jimmy Carter's White House, he was the lone, strutting hawk, the adventurously steely Cold Warrior in an administration that valued detente and arms control. Yet there he was, on Oct. 28, at a conference sponsored by the American Prospect, arousing stormy applause from a crowd of liberal Democrats with a rigorous, passionate speech that slammed President Bush's foreign policy and celebrated what seemed to be liberal principles.
He bemoaned what he called Bush's "paranoiac view of the world," which has resulted in "two very disturbing phenomena—the loss of U.S. international credibility [and] the growing U.S. international isolation."
He called for "a return to fundamentals" in U.S. foreign policy, including the construction of genuine alliances, "particularly with Europe, which does share our values and interests even if it disagrees with us on specific policies."
Posted by: Kosh on November 20, 2003 03:08 PMOK, so if center-right journals such as the Economist, or rightwingnut things like the WSJ editorial page can disagree with Bush, can normal moderates to liberal US citizens disagree with Bush and his administration and not be accused of hate crimes and satanism?
The whole issue of supposedly improper strong disagreement with rightwing Republican policies and the new etiquette of reasoned discourse that is being sold by the right wing these days should simply be rejected completely. Preferably while laughing in a non-offensive way. I admit this is a little off the subject, but it is related to earlier posts.
For years conservatives have championed the "free market" of ideas, ideological consumer sovereignty: let completely free debate reign. They attack any controls on offensive or threatening speech as political correctness and censorship (though I admit I agree with them to some extent there, sometimes). And I think conservatives have used the newly forbidden "motive arguement" for years. Many times I have heard a conservative make an argument, no matter how long or obscure or slender the evidence, and then declare it to be patently obvious to anyone with enough sense to get out of the house in the morning. And then ask "How could ANYONE, in good faith disagree!?" This anyone was usually a liberal.
The whole thing is complete bunk. I take my cue from Madison on motive arguments: "A silly reason given by a wise man is rarely the true one." So, insert "supposedly" in the appropriate place, and that can be applied today.
So, liberals and moderates should say what they think, impute motives where they think they have a good argument, threaten no violence, and incite no insurrection. And laugh off the accusations of hate speech, or inappropriate modes of argumentation.
Posted by: jml on November 20, 2003 05:31 PMYou unwrap the energy bill and find you don't like the smell? Isn't there going to be an "omnibus" spending bill hurried through in time for the holidays, rather than finishing up individual spending packages? No time for niceties - or scrutiny. Gotta get this through. Oh, the stench!
Arlen Specter is threatening to hold it up, but not for spending provisions, just overtime rules.
Posted by: K Harris on November 21, 2003 04:46 AM